The basic things to know: The Nauts are neutral and can go anywhere, and the Scion and Jafnhar are at war.
The Nauts[]
The Nauts descend from the survivors of the international research communities in the Arctic and Antarctic. They have no central system of government, but are a loosely organized coalition of anarchists such as traders, soldiers and researchers. The Nauts took most of their know-how from the scientists of the Earth's surface and have been able to hone these valuable skills. Other confederations highly treasure the knowledge of the Nauts and their manufactured goods. After the Final Continental War, they were able to make their most notable achievements in nanotechnology and their subaqueous survival is based mainly on this skill.
Among the Nauts, there are agnostics and religious individuals but very few atheists, because the scientific and pragmatic spirit of their culture is so consciously aware of its limitations. Their religions, like the Nauts themselves, are an assimilation of the different religious streams from the old world. Perhaps it is due to this absence of government that dogmatic conflicts are few and far between in their society.
Many of the Nauts are indifferent as to whether their lives end under the water or if humanity ever succeeds in colonizing the Earth's surface again. At the moment, survival is of the utmost importance for the Nauts at a time when they are being forced to surrender their last colony on land and seek refuge at the bottom of the ocean. Many of them are new to underwater warfare. The Naut community helps newbies to adjust to their new deep-sea surroundings.
The Scion[]
The Scion survived because they were able to quickly adapt their knowledge of photovoltaics and biology for the specific purpose of producing oxygen. As opposed to the other confederations, the Scion never went through a phase of free-for-all fighting for survival. For this reason, they have maintained a more civil and respectful manner with each other than can be observed in the other confederations, and have a healthier balance within their government and military. In a relatively peaceful migration, they moved to their preferred area of settlement near the surface of the ocean.
The Scion have managed to plant subaqueous forests and fields and have attained the best living conditions. While the Nauts and Jafnhar have gotten used to a life with artificial light amidst surroundings made of plastic and metal, the Scion have designed their living areas much as they were on the surface. Since very few Nauts and Jafnhar have ever set foot on the Scion bases, there are wild rumors about their subaquatic parks.
The Scion come from a scientific environment and inherited their unprejudiced New Age religious views from the lost state of California. A former Scion leader forged an alternative religion from the myths prevalent at that time and which, over the years, took on a life of their own and were taken more and more seriously, partly as a trend, and partly due to a lack of viable alternatives. The motivational effects of visualization and meditation were as critically needed after the Final Continental War as oxygen in order to lead mankind successfully through the battle for survival. Over time, they developed the firm belief that they descended from King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table, the Celts or the ancient Greeks.
The first settlement of the Scion, Amris, was the first underwater battlefield after the Final Continental War. Nauts as well as Jafnhar attacked Amris with the intention of subjugating it. This is the source of the frequent self-righteous destructive wave of the Scion in battle and the reason they give priority to a strong defensive strategy. They have no delusions of grandeur – with one exception: the elimination of the Jafnhars' Parazon generators.
The Jafnhar[]
The Jafnhar are the descendants of survivors from the pump and pipeline stations of North Siberia who lived in desert domes in a Middle Eastern city before being forced to move below water after the Earth's temperature began to rage out of control as a result of the destroyed atmosphere from the Final Continental War. On their journey to the bottom of the ocean, Russian and Japanese crews from nuclear-powered submarines joined the Jafnhar and shared their secrets with them, which explains the source of their technical knowledge today.
The Jafnhar are tightly organized and all aspects of their lives are influenced by the military. Even members of the Jafnhar who were expelled due to their lack of discipline can't shake off these old habits. The Nauts jokingly call the Jafnhars' aggressive nature a mixture of oil and Gothic. Nuclear technology and oil production were the reasons for the Jafnhar to seek out deep-sea trenches as their preferred area of settlement. Their stations are located deep in the dark reaches of the ocean and can be spotted miles away by the red lights of the guard towers, which act as beacons shining brightly through the murky abyss.
The Jafnhar follow three ideologies which are highly contradictive. Which one of these three groups a Jafnhar belongs to is more important to them than being a Jafnhar themselves. Conversational exchange with a Janhfar is only possible if one is completely sure which group they belong to and one doesn't make any mistakes while communicating with them. The groups differ only slightly in appearance and uniform, so that mistakes in identification are quite commonplace. This can have deadly consequences for a simple slip of the tongue.
Jafnhar technicians began early with their endeavors to make the Earth's surface inhabitable again and while doing so, encountered resistance from the Scion which has since developed into a bitter, never-ending war.